Post by merh on Aug 24, 2022 22:46:27 GMT
The FBI was heavily in favor of Trump.
Comey was trying to head off leaks from within the FBI with all that crap which ended up affecting thedidn't.
The department is supposed to remain neutral.
It didnt.
He's Establishment...........can't you see how it's the same for both? Look at Cheney and Kitzinger these days.
They were covering for Hillary cuz they assumed she was a shoe in. They've done nothing but undermine Trump since he won, as promised by Schumer.
Just because they couldn't find an actual crime for all these years doesn't change that fact. But they're looking to create one now, right? With you cheering them on.
Neutral as the CIA and the IRS? pffft
Dude, we're you not paying attention?
The FBI was leaking crap, true or not, like a sieve. "Unnamed sources in the FBI" & all.
Former FBI official had numerous unauthorized contacts with media during 2016 campaign, watchdog says
The DOJ's inspector general said Michael Steinbach, who retired in 2017, flouted law enforcement agency's policies by socializing with journalists.
By JOSH GERSTEIN
06/14/2022 12:00 AM EDT
Updated: 06/15/2022 01:55 PM EDT
A former senior FBI official who oversaw the bureau’s politically sensitive investigations in 2016 into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and Donald Trump’s ties to Russia had “extensive contacts” with the news media in violation of FBI policy, a Justice Department watchdog report found.
A Justice Department Inspector General review released in 2018 and an investigative summary issued last year did not name the former official, but the report made public Monday identified him as Michael Steinbach, who served as the executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Bureau.
“Steinbach had hundreds of contacts with the media for several years” while heading up the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division and then continued such interactions in 2016 when he took up the senior national security role, according to the report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz. “This media contact included social engagements outside of FBI headquarters without any coordination from Office of Public Affairs (OPA), involving drinks, lunches and dinners.”
The heavily redacted 27-page report, released to POLITICO under the Freedom of Information Act and dated July 2021, does not accuse Steinbach of unauthorized disclosures to the media. However, Horowitz’s office has expressed concerns that extensive, unsupervised contacts between FBI officials and the media can lead to such leaks and make them harder to investigate.
The OIG’s 2018 report looking at the Bureau’s actions during the 2016 presidential election said the FBI’s policy on media contacts was being “widely ignored” and said violations of that policy appeared to emanate from a “cultural attitude.”
One passage in the newly released report says that “prosecution was declined,” but the remainder of that line is redacted from the copy made public Monday.
Steinbach, who retired from the FBI in February 2017 after a 22-year career at the law enforcement agency, did not respond to email and social media messages seeking comment on the report.
The inspector general report also faults Steinbach for accepting free tickets to two big Washington media galas: the Radio & Television Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2015 and the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2016. The report says he was obliged to get approval from ethics officials at the FBI and failed to do so. He also failed to report the tickets on his annual financial disclosure form, the report says.
The report says Steinbach had at least 27 in-person meetings with seven reporters from 2014 through his retirement three years later. They frequented various restaurants near FBi headquarters, including Capital Grille, Gordon Biersch, Asia Nine, and Central, according to the report, which says investigators “were unable to determine who paid for the drinks or meals during these social engagements.”
The report concedes that Steinbach did engage with FBI public affairs officials about a “limited” number of the interactions, but said that in many instances there were no records of any such coordination.
Steinbach declined to be interviewed by the inspector general’s office, which has no way to compel such an interview after an official retires or resigns. However, he did answer questions in another FBI inquiry a few months after his retirement and maintained that his interactions with journalists were approved.
“Steinbach stated that he was authorized, while EAD of NSB, to provide non-case related information to the media as background,” the report says. “Steinbach said he was frequently contacted by the media for comment and questions relative to a variety of national security issues, and the media was ‘relentless’ and ‘aggressive’ in their attempts to get a story.”
The DOJ's inspector general said Michael Steinbach, who retired in 2017, flouted law enforcement agency's policies by socializing with journalists.
By JOSH GERSTEIN
06/14/2022 12:00 AM EDT
Updated: 06/15/2022 01:55 PM EDT
A former senior FBI official who oversaw the bureau’s politically sensitive investigations in 2016 into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and Donald Trump’s ties to Russia had “extensive contacts” with the news media in violation of FBI policy, a Justice Department watchdog report found.
A Justice Department Inspector General review released in 2018 and an investigative summary issued last year did not name the former official, but the report made public Monday identified him as Michael Steinbach, who served as the executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Bureau.
“Steinbach had hundreds of contacts with the media for several years” while heading up the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division and then continued such interactions in 2016 when he took up the senior national security role, according to the report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz. “This media contact included social engagements outside of FBI headquarters without any coordination from Office of Public Affairs (OPA), involving drinks, lunches and dinners.”
The heavily redacted 27-page report, released to POLITICO under the Freedom of Information Act and dated July 2021, does not accuse Steinbach of unauthorized disclosures to the media. However, Horowitz’s office has expressed concerns that extensive, unsupervised contacts between FBI officials and the media can lead to such leaks and make them harder to investigate.
The OIG’s 2018 report looking at the Bureau’s actions during the 2016 presidential election said the FBI’s policy on media contacts was being “widely ignored” and said violations of that policy appeared to emanate from a “cultural attitude.”
One passage in the newly released report says that “prosecution was declined,” but the remainder of that line is redacted from the copy made public Monday.
Steinbach, who retired from the FBI in February 2017 after a 22-year career at the law enforcement agency, did not respond to email and social media messages seeking comment on the report.
The inspector general report also faults Steinbach for accepting free tickets to two big Washington media galas: the Radio & Television Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2015 and the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2016. The report says he was obliged to get approval from ethics officials at the FBI and failed to do so. He also failed to report the tickets on his annual financial disclosure form, the report says.
The report says Steinbach had at least 27 in-person meetings with seven reporters from 2014 through his retirement three years later. They frequented various restaurants near FBi headquarters, including Capital Grille, Gordon Biersch, Asia Nine, and Central, according to the report, which says investigators “were unable to determine who paid for the drinks or meals during these social engagements.”
The report concedes that Steinbach did engage with FBI public affairs officials about a “limited” number of the interactions, but said that in many instances there were no records of any such coordination.
Steinbach declined to be interviewed by the inspector general’s office, which has no way to compel such an interview after an official retires or resigns. However, he did answer questions in another FBI inquiry a few months after his retirement and maintained that his interactions with journalists were approved.
“Steinbach stated that he was authorized, while EAD of NSB, to provide non-case related information to the media as background,” the report says. “Steinbach said he was frequently contacted by the media for comment and questions relative to a variety of national security issues, and the media was ‘relentless’ and ‘aggressive’ in their attempts to get a story.”
The anti-Clinton insurgency at the FBI, explained
By Yochi Dreazen Updated Nov 6, 2016, 6:39pm EST
It’s come to this: The FBI, America’s premier law enforcement agency, just had to decide whether to investigate one of its own Twitter accounts to see if it had an anti-Hillary Clinton bias.
The account in question, @fbirecordsvault, burst into the news earlier this week after abruptly posting records related to Bill Clinton’s last-minute — and deeply controversial — pardon of financier Marc Rich. An FBI official said in an interview that the bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility referred the matter to its Inspection Division for a possible investigation into whether anyone in the FBI had intentionally released the documents to hurt Hillary Clinton.
The official said the bureau’s internal watchdog opted against opening a formal investigation. Still, the fact that such a decision even had to be made highlights the crisis engulfing the bureau in the days since FBI Director James Comey stunned observers inside and outside the bureau by notifying Congress just 11 days before the election that he was renewing the dormant probe into Clinton’s private email server.
Comey has since come under sustained criticism from law enforcement veterans and lawmakers from both parties who believe he broke with longstanding Justice Department policies by directly intruding into the presidential race — and potentially impacting its outcome.
“There’s a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election,” George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general under President George Bush, told the New York Times last week. “Those guidelines exist for a reason. Sometimes, that makes for hard decisions. But bypassing them has consequences.”
Comey dropped another bombshell Sunday when he released a new letter to lawmakers saying the FBI had seen nothing in its review of the newly discovered trove of emails that would change his July recommendation that Clinton not face criminal charges.
Voters have spent days being barraged by round-the-clock coverage of his first letter, however, and Sunday’s quasi-retraction could be way too little, too late. That’s particularly true for the millions of Americans who have cast early ballots since Comey made his announcement.
The FBI chief also hasn’t been the only member of the FBI bureau stepping into the election. Earlier this week, unnamed sources within the bureau told the Wall Street Journal that some FBI agents believed they had enough evidence to begin an aggressive investigation into a potential pay-to-play scheme at the Clinton Foundation, but were overruled by more senior officials.
Another anti-Clinton leak came Thursday, when sources thought to be disgruntled FBI officials told Fox News that an indictment was coming in the Clinton Foundation case. The story gave Trump a new talking point, dominated Fox’s primetime news programming, and rocketed across the conservative media before being debunked by an array of other media outlets. By that point, though, the damage had already been done.
Taken together, it’s easy to come away with the conclusion that the FBI is out to get Hillary Clinton. The truth, though, is far more complicated. The FBI isn’t a monolith, and it isn’t the bureau as a whole that is targeting Clinton. Experts who study the FBI believe the leaks are coming from a small clique of agents who profoundly distrust Clinton and believe she deserves to be punished for what they see as a long record of ethically dubious behavior.
“Comey has unleashed a lot of the bad behavior by people down the line by signaling that it’s okay to treat Hillary Clinton differently,” says Matthew Miller, a Democrat who formerly served as a spokesperson for the Justice Department. “There certainly seem to be FBI agents who have taken a really hard partisan line and are just kind of blinded by their anger and hatred toward Hillary Clinton.”
The recent series of FBI leaks are particularly worrisome because they raise the prospect of a state security agency equipped with the full resources and investigative might of the federal government working to interfere in the elections. The FBI is so powerful — it can, with court approval, issue subpoenas, tap phones, intercept emails and conduct round-the-clock surveillance — that even a small coterie of its agents can find ways of influencing the political process. That’s the kind of thing we normally see in autocracies like Egypt or Turkey, not here in the United States.
By Yochi Dreazen Updated Nov 6, 2016, 6:39pm EST
It’s come to this: The FBI, America’s premier law enforcement agency, just had to decide whether to investigate one of its own Twitter accounts to see if it had an anti-Hillary Clinton bias.
The account in question, @fbirecordsvault, burst into the news earlier this week after abruptly posting records related to Bill Clinton’s last-minute — and deeply controversial — pardon of financier Marc Rich. An FBI official said in an interview that the bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility referred the matter to its Inspection Division for a possible investigation into whether anyone in the FBI had intentionally released the documents to hurt Hillary Clinton.
The official said the bureau’s internal watchdog opted against opening a formal investigation. Still, the fact that such a decision even had to be made highlights the crisis engulfing the bureau in the days since FBI Director James Comey stunned observers inside and outside the bureau by notifying Congress just 11 days before the election that he was renewing the dormant probe into Clinton’s private email server.
Comey has since come under sustained criticism from law enforcement veterans and lawmakers from both parties who believe he broke with longstanding Justice Department policies by directly intruding into the presidential race — and potentially impacting its outcome.
“There’s a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election,” George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general under President George Bush, told the New York Times last week. “Those guidelines exist for a reason. Sometimes, that makes for hard decisions. But bypassing them has consequences.”
Comey dropped another bombshell Sunday when he released a new letter to lawmakers saying the FBI had seen nothing in its review of the newly discovered trove of emails that would change his July recommendation that Clinton not face criminal charges.
Voters have spent days being barraged by round-the-clock coverage of his first letter, however, and Sunday’s quasi-retraction could be way too little, too late. That’s particularly true for the millions of Americans who have cast early ballots since Comey made his announcement.
The FBI chief also hasn’t been the only member of the FBI bureau stepping into the election. Earlier this week, unnamed sources within the bureau told the Wall Street Journal that some FBI agents believed they had enough evidence to begin an aggressive investigation into a potential pay-to-play scheme at the Clinton Foundation, but were overruled by more senior officials.
Another anti-Clinton leak came Thursday, when sources thought to be disgruntled FBI officials told Fox News that an indictment was coming in the Clinton Foundation case. The story gave Trump a new talking point, dominated Fox’s primetime news programming, and rocketed across the conservative media before being debunked by an array of other media outlets. By that point, though, the damage had already been done.
Taken together, it’s easy to come away with the conclusion that the FBI is out to get Hillary Clinton. The truth, though, is far more complicated. The FBI isn’t a monolith, and it isn’t the bureau as a whole that is targeting Clinton. Experts who study the FBI believe the leaks are coming from a small clique of agents who profoundly distrust Clinton and believe she deserves to be punished for what they see as a long record of ethically dubious behavior.
“Comey has unleashed a lot of the bad behavior by people down the line by signaling that it’s okay to treat Hillary Clinton differently,” says Matthew Miller, a Democrat who formerly served as a spokesperson for the Justice Department. “There certainly seem to be FBI agents who have taken a really hard partisan line and are just kind of blinded by their anger and hatred toward Hillary Clinton.”
The recent series of FBI leaks are particularly worrisome because they raise the prospect of a state security agency equipped with the full resources and investigative might of the federal government working to interfere in the elections. The FBI is so powerful — it can, with court approval, issue subpoenas, tap phones, intercept emails and conduct round-the-clock surveillance — that even a small coterie of its agents can find ways of influencing the political process. That’s the kind of thing we normally see in autocracies like Egypt or Turkey, not here in the United States.
Sure.
![[giveup]](http://storage.proboards.com/7182076/images/FSYefibmKqtatIXMgHZg.gif)
![[cheers]](http://storage.proboards.com/7182076/images/engyBVslEdpmpmdnBwZQ.gif)
